After a bit of coaxing from @Littorio I’ll dip my toe into this campaign, late though I be! (Hopefully no-one minds?)
This will be part three of my Illustrious Trilogy, featuring aircraft from none other than HMS Illustrious from WW2. The first being a Fairey Fulmar and the second being a Vought Corsair
I started this kit as I needed a break from HMS Punjabi which has become a tedious, expensive and slow build which I’m no longer enjoying, and have become bogged down with.
I needed something to get my mojo back… Let’s hope this is it…
I’ll be using Airfix’s by now, familiar 1/72 kit
And here’s where it gets unusual. I have a PE set from WEM back before they were acquired by Tom’s Modelworks. It’s WEM’s first and I believe only foray into aircraft PE and I don’t even think it’s still available.
The set even includes decals for the instrument panel
Eduard masking set
The chosen colour scheme: obviously the Taranto raid which, IIRC, this aircraft and 824 squadron were transferred to Illustrious for their famous raid on the Italian fleet…
I’ve started in the cockpit prepping the parts, but first colour to go down is the internal walls of the fuselage, with a “dope” colour…
Hopefully I can break my pattern of not being able to finish campaigns with the rest of 2026 to finish the Swordfish 
Here’s my first question to the brains trust: Airfix call out indicates that the top face of the cockpit enclosure should be “85” which is “black”… But I would have thought cockpit green is more accurate?
Main build thread is here 